“While painting, I feel a power of color in me that I did not possess before.” —Vincent van Gogh
They talked in a fresh wash of sunshine. She led him through her garden.
Blushing tomatoes, cucumbers almost ready, Bordered by marigolds.
They fondled poems and paintings And listened for the voice that called them to touch.
She leaned against The Starry Night. Touched his face with the tips of her fingers. The soft pressure of his lips controlled her tongue And it believed the wet lie his tongue was telling.
His seed took root in her soul. Sprouting green thoughts. The red of a kiss. The gold of fingertips On skin. Gazing blue eyes.
While writing poems, she feels a power of color in her She did not possess before he touched her.
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” dramatizes the speaker’s metaphorical journey to explore the nature of a contrived, non-existent catastrophe. The speaker begins with a major historical and literary error: that there exists only one book of myths.
Introduction and Text of “Diving into the Wreck”
Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths.” Note that by stating she has read “the book of myths,” she is implying that there is only one such book.
This unfortunate beginning leaves the speaker’s thought processes nowhere to go to explore truth. By beginning with this claim, the speaker promises to take her listeners into sheer fantasy.
While the speaker creates a fascinating, metaphorical undersea diving expedition, she also creates an abysmally inaccurate revisionist history. Her so-called “wreck” becomes nothing but a straw man, built from the beginning claim of her having read “the book of myths.”
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.
There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment.
I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.
First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed
the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damages worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
Adrienne Rich did compose one poem that stands the test of time as a truly successful piece; that poem is “Living in Sin.” Unfortunately, “Diving into he Wreck,” a poem much more widely anthologized than Rich’s fine, successful “Living in Sin,” does not attain the literary value of Rich’s one masterpiece.
First Movement: A Single Book of Myths?
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.
Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths,” implying that there in only one “book of myths.” The speaker does not identify any specific book of myths she had read; this omission is significant.
There are, in fact, many books of myths—Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, Islamic, ancient Greek and Roman, and these identify only the five major religions and the two ancient cultural nationalities that have influenced Western civilization from its beginning through their books of myths.
But this speaker is not addressing reality or anything that is actually within the bounds of the historical record; she is reporting from an adolescent hatred of her culture, supposedly struggling against an oppression that she has to create as a straw man in order to burn down.
Thus this unnamed “book of myths” springs from the speaker’s imagination that has written a whole tome of nonsense targeting a phantom that her movement labels “The Patriarchy.” Therefore anything written, especially by men, and more specifically by white men, is contained in this speaker’s concocted fantasy called (according to her truth) “the book of myths.”
The speaker begins her journey to explore the metaphoric “wreck” armed with the information that she has gathered from reading this non-existent but concocted book of myths.
She takes a camera and a sharp knife with her. She dresses like a scuba-diver in “body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flipper / the grave and awkward mask.” She does not explain why the “flipper” is “absurd,” or what is “grave and awkward” about the “mask.”
Lest her listeners think she is really going on a Cousteau-like diving expedition, she disabuses them of that notion—she will not be aboard “the sun-flooded schooner” with “an assiduous team”; she will be here alone. She will remain in her library/study while examining further this unidentified, fictitious “book of myths.”
The speaker creates an extended metaphor likening her scrutiny of the book of myths to diving down to a shipwreck. She compares herself to the divers who plunge deep below the Atlantic to gather information about the Titanic.
The speaker, therefore, has made a judgment about that book of myths; it is like a giant ocean liner that hit an iceberg and sank into the sea, and now this brave speaker will determine the cause and possibly salvage whatever she can from the wreck.
Second Movement: Guilty Ladders
There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment.
The speaker notes the ladder, which she uses to descend into the water. The ladder “is always there / hanging innocently.” The comic effect jars the senses: what would a guilty ladder do? Hang guiltily, one supposes.
Also rather comical, as well as substance-free, is the claim, “We know what it is for / we who have used it.” Whether they have used it or not, most conscious individuals over the age of two know what a ladder is for.
The absurdities are beginning to accrue, damaging the credibility of this speaker’s ability to understand even the simplest of concepts, especially her remark about the ladder, which, if it were not used, would be merely, “a piece of maritime floss / some sundry equipment.” Of course, any equipment that has no specific use would be considered superfluous.
Third Movement: Descending into the Unknown
I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.
The speaker descends the ladder into the ocean and cannot tell “when the ocean / will begin.” She reports that her flippers cripple her, and she crawls like an insect down the ladder. She seems to have difficulty approaching that “book of myths.”
Fourth Movement: An Ocean Filled with Air
First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element.
The speaker describes the color of the air, seeming to have forgotten that her metaphor created a diver entering the ocean: there would be no air in the ocean water. She claims she is “blacking out,” but she also claims that her mask is powerful.
The mask does a remarkable thing: “it pumps my blood with power.” This claim creates another absurdity; the mask protects the diver from drowning by covering her nose and furnishing oxygen; it has nothing to do with directly pumping blood.
Alone, she has to learn to how turn her body in the water. She is creating image upon image, claim upon claim that offer nothing of substance. She seems to imply that someone should have been there to help her learn to “turn [her] body without force”—but never reveals who or why such assistance would be expected or even necessary.
Fifth Movement: Ocean Breathing Is Surprisingly Different
And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here.
The speaker now reports that she almost forgets why she came, as she observes the sea creatures that are used to their habitat, and that “you breathe differently down here”—another superfluous remark, given the fact that she would be equipped with diving gear supplying the oxygen—obviously breathing with diving equipment would cause one to “breathe differently.”
When this speaker is not making blatantly false statements, she simply offers up simplistic remarks whose substance remains lacking, because the information they present is obvious, that is, already known.
Sixth Movement: Words, Maps, Purpose
I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed
In a failed attempt to bring the metaphor together, the speaker baldly states what the reader has known all along, “I came to explore the wreck.” She adds, “The words are purposes. / The words are maps.”
Again, she adds text without any new information to further her narrative. All agree that words have purpose and are similar to maps. The speaker adds, “I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.” Again, nothing new here, that is what all divers who explore shipwrecks do.
Seventh Movement: Circles of Unreason
the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damages worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
The speaker then emphasizes that she came for the wreck itself “not the story of the wreck.” This metaphorically presents a very huge problem. Remembering that the “wreck” is the “book of myths.”
“Myths” are stories, and although she now claims she is really after the thing itself and not the myth, she has no way of securing that thing, because it exists only in the “book of myths.”
The speaker is now asking the reader to accept only her interpretation of the myths and not what others have found. She is implying that only she has truth of the thing; she can take the myth and make it not be a myth.
Eighth Movement: Because the Speaker Says So
This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he
In order to turn the wreck/myth into “the thing,” the speaker creates a drama of a mermaid and merman who “circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.”
The speaker is now transforming herself from a mere reader/diver into an androgynous creature that has the delicious ability to report about the wreck merely because the speaker says so.
Ninth Movement: A Question of Death
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass
This creature is actually dead, displaying a “drowned face [that] sleeps with open eyes.” The open eyes, unfortunately, cannot see any better than closed eyes when they are situated in the head of a corpse.
But then again, maybe they are not really dead, for she claims, “we are the half-destroyed instruments that once worked” but because of that iceberg now lie ruined beneath the waves.
Tenth Movement: Sculpting from Misinformed Fancy
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
Apparently having grown tired of the water drama, the speaker sheds the scuba-gear and rouses up a universal, all-encompassing, profound statement: that “book of myths” does not contain our names. Whose names? Surely, she means to call attention to all of those women who have been left out of history. But this claim is simply not true.
In fact, there are many “books of myths” that contain the names and activities of many women throughout history, for example Greek mythology [1], Hindu [2], Norse [3], and Eqyptian [4]. According to Joanna Gillan, writing in “Ten Powerful and Fearsome Women of the Ancient World” [5],
There have been female figures throughout history who held powerful roles or played significantly influential parts too. Throughout history there have been many powerful women who have led nations or guided armies into war, renowned not only as fearsome fighters, but also as cunning strategists and inspirational leaders. There were others who made a name for themselves in a domain traditionally held by men and whose stories, carried forward over the centuries, continue to be told today.
The speaker has made the disingenuous claim that women have been omitted from mythological and historical narratives, based on her own fabricated notion of one non-existent book of myths.
But that notion of women being omitted from history remains a disingenuous talking point in the feminist movement. And it is one talking point that can be easily refuted with a little common sense and some serious research.
Image: Adrienne Rich – National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Commentaries on Other Adrienne Rich Poems
Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” Adrienne Rich’s poem “Living in Sin” is one of American literature’s finest pieces in free verse. Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery. This little drama remains one of this poet’s best poetic efforts.
Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” Structured in three awkward movements, Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” explores a theme that feminists [1] employ to assert concocted damage done to women by “patriarchal” marriage.
Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” is one of American literature’s finest poems in free verse. Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery. This little drama remains one of this poet’s best efforts.
Introduction with Text of “Living in Sin”
Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” features four distinctive movements. The poem focuses on sense awareness including visual imagery, such as “a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own,” auditory as in “each separate stair would writhe / under the milkman’s tramp,” and olfactory with “last night’s cheese,” an image that superbly supports the theme of disillusionment.
An omniscient speaker reports the actions and details of the narrative. While the reader is admitted into the mind of the young woman in the poem, it is obvious that the young woman is not actually telling her own story.
This tactic is employed to make the revelations appear more objective and believable. If the woman in the poem were reporting the events and the feelings engendered by them, only confusion would ensue because the woman in the poem is, in fact, confused about her feelings.
The phrase “living in sin” signifies an unmarried man and woman living together. A more contemporary term is “shacking up,” but as mores change, the concept is losing its traditional distinction. In a postmodern world, the notion of sin becomes more and more passé.
Living in Sin
She had thought the studio would keep itself no dust upon the furniture of love Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse had risen at his urging. Not that at five each separate star would writhe under the mailman’s tramp; that morning light so coldly would delineate the scraps of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles; that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own— enjoy from some village in the moldings . . . Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the tabletop, and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. By evening she was back in love again though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs.
Reading
Commentary on “Living in Sin”
Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” paints a portrait of disillusionment felt by a young woman, who at the urging of her paramour has moved in with him in what appears to be a small flat or studio apartment.
First Movement: What! I Have to Dust the Furniture?
She had thought the studio would keep itself no dust upon the furniture of love Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal the pains relieved of grime. A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse had risen at his urging.
A young woman is puttering around in a studio apartment, observing the slovenliness into which she has allowed herself to be brought by her boyfriend. The idea of moving in together had seemed so romantic when he first touted the idea.
He had suggested a delicious plate of fruit on the coffee table, he painted the image of a piano draped in a “Persian shawl,” and he described the cute antics of his cat chasing a mouse—all so colorful, sweet, and amusing.
But she is now observing that there is dust on the real furniture, although no dust had appeared as her fellow described the “furniture of love.” She is finding out that she actually has to work to make the place livable. The faucets belch out squeaky noises, and the windowpanes are filthy. This scenario is not what she envisioned when her boyfriend suggested they shack up together.
Second Movement: How Can I Sleep through This Racket
Not that at five each separate star would writhe under the mailman’s tramp; that morning light so coldly would delineate the scraps of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles; that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own— enjoy from some village in the moldings . . .
The young woman now rattling around in the tiny flat furthermore had no clue that she would have her sleep interrupted by the creaking stair-steps at 5 a.m. by the milkman stomping up those noisy stairway.
Also, the “scraps / of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles” do not look so tempting with the cold light of morning revealing them for what they actually are—filthy trash to be tossed out.
She also had not anticipated to engage in a staring contest with a cockroach that has stationed himself “on the kitchen shelf among the saucers,” making her understand the creepiness in the fact that he must have crawled out “from some village in the moldings” where numerous others of his ilk continue to proliferate.
Third Movement: He Doesn’t Look so Good in the Cold Light Day
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the tabletop, and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
This nasty studio apartment is proving to be nothing but a pig sty, unlike any love-haven she might have imagined prior to moving in. Even her man has disappointed her: with a bored demeanor, he plunked out of few notes on the piano then complains that it is “out of tune.” Might this suggest that he does not even know how to play the piano?
So he gives himself a quick look in the mirror, “rub[s] at his beard,” and leaves the apartment to buy cigarettes. What, no kiss good-bye? While alone, she is “jeered by the minor demons,” annoyed by petty thoughts that irk her more than anger her. So she gets busy, making the bed and dusting, but “let[s] the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.” Oops, another irksome detail of “living in sin.”
Fourth Movement: Will Love Get Me though This?
By evening she was back in love again though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs.
Nevertheless, once her man is back, and they snuggle up together with wine and cheese again, she finds herself “back in love again.” But later as she tries to sleep again, she remembers the irritating details of the grubby little place she is sharing with this yawning man as the creaking stair-steps remind her of what living in sin looks like in the cold light of day.
Commentaries on Other Adrienne Rich Poems
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths.” Note that by stating she has read “the book of myths,” she is implying that there is only one such book.
Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” Structured in three awkward movements, Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” explores a theme that feminists [1] employ to assert concocted damage done to women by “patriarchal” marriage.
Kneeling in light falling upon the floor Suff’ring sorrow harvested through my sin My guilty heart had opened wide the door Through which the lustful, greedy spook slipped in As peasants bent over their modest fare I search the soil for relief of my stain But each potato holds the weight I share Of shame I attempt to throw off in vain O Love, demand the price this flesh has wrought Make retribution scour my ev’ry bone Allow me grace to right this ruin I brought Allow me no more errors to condone If I must bleed to earn a better way Let blood run as I learn through night and day
“I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamplight, have dug the earth with those same hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and of how they have honestly earned their food.” —Vincent van Gogh
Their drama is played out in wordless harmony (like yours and mine, now that we talk no more). Their meal is a symphony of simplicity.
Their dark, luxuriant mouths and noses make me think of Africans, though these are Dutch peasants (life is tinged with Africa, my own Greek blood fairly sings of it).
This study hints at the grim blood Vincent would be shedding with the bullet. This study of poor peasants pouring their barley coffee, cutting their potatoes,
tasting silence in the dim room suffers me to know that I will go on digging deep into dirt, hoarding these words, stocking this tongue
till it tells some truth. Vincent let his blood many times before the bullet—now I bleed & sweat bullets at the brow, laboring to stretch ink
across blank pages, eating words like potatoes, mining you for some treasure I sense I lost somewhere in the dusk-tinted past—God knows how many times.
The world of literature is filled with horrid descriptions, and T. S. Eliot has contributed some of the most horrid. The mind of the Eliot observer, however, is most often the locus of the horror along with its beauty.
Introduction and Text of “Preludes”
In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot has confirmed the difference between the poet and the speaker of his poems: the best artists are capable of the divergence from the passion necessary to create good art.
It is thus that the speaker of a poem should never be referred to as the poet, even if the reader is quite certain based on biography that the incidents, thoughts, or feelings do, indeed, belong to the poet.
One would never conclude that because Othello murdered Desdemona in his play, that the Shakespeare writer had also committed murder. Poets speak through characters, just as playwrights speak through characters.
Therefore, one remains on safer ground, referring to the speaker in a poem as “the speaker” instead of expressing the name of the poet. T. S. Eliot’s poems are not necessarily a psychoanalytic exercise focusing on the mind of T. S. Eliot. His poems features characters just as his plays do.
Eliot’s poem”Preludes” plays out in four roughly constructed parts. Part I features 13 lines and a tortured rime scheme. Part II displays 10 lines, whose rime scheme is equally uneven. Both parts III and IV employ 16 lines, again featuring uneven rime schemes but with fewer rimes than those that grace Parts I and II.
The poem strings out in the widely employed technique called “stream-of-consciousness”—particularly loved by the modernists of the mid-to-late 20 century. This technique likely accounts for the haphazard nature of the rimes.
This poem also features the “self-reflexive second-person” in Part II, as well as the “self-reflexive third person” in Part IV. Part IV also lands squarely on the first person, as the speaker finally takes up the mantle of confession, finalizing his observations.
Preludes
I
The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed, You lay upon your back, and waited; You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted; They flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back And the light crept up between the shutters And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, You had such a vision of the street As the street hardly understands; Sitting along the bed’s edge, where You curled the papers from your hair, Or clasped the yellow soles of feet In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o’clock; And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Reading by Jeremy Irons
Commentary on “Preludes”
The world of literature is filled with horrid descriptions, and T. S. Eliot has contributed some of the most horrid. The mind of the Eliot observer, however, is most often the locus of the horror along with its beauty.
Part I: Observing an Evening in Winter
The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
The speaker begins by reporting on what he is seeing as an evening in winter is coming on. He allows readers to see what he sees as well as smell what he smells. It is roughly dinner time so he smells cooking odors wafting in the air.
The end of the day he finds resembles the butts of cigarettes. The end of the day is “smoky” and stinking of those “burnt-out” butts. His colorful description drags the reader into the materialism of a world gone ugly.
The melancholy of the opening setting of “Preludes” may give the reader remembrance of the “patient etherised upon a table” from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Such a vivid yet horrid description drips of loneliness and dissatisfaction.
Suddenly, the grimness of the scene is rendered even more disgusting as a rainstorm comes plunging into the ugly grimness of the surrounding area. The scraps of debris and crumpled up leaves he has trampled become storm soaked, adding to the unpleasantness of the speaker’s environment.
The speaker then takes note of a “cab-horse” and claims that the poor animal is “lonely.” Obviously, the speaker is projecting this own emotion on the animal (see “Pathetic Fallacy”). But that he does so demonstrates his own feelings at the time.
Part II: The Next Morning
The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.
Part II finds the speaker awakening in the next morning hours. He smells stale beer while listening to feet trudging through the streets. Again, the choice of details sheds light on the speaker’s mood and passions.
The speaker says that those “muddy feet” are slogging to the coffee stands, while many sets of hands are raising the blinds in “a thousand furnished rooms.” The speaker notes that like him, so many people in these dingy rented rooms are waking up, raising their blinds, and going for coffee, yet he seems to want to remain aloof in his observations.
The pallid description yields the monotony and seemingly painful awareness of desperation that these poor folks must endure every morning as they pursue their dull and unfulfilled lives.
Part III: Remember the Night Before
You tossed a blanket from the bed, You lay upon your back, and waited; You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted; They flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back And the light crept up between the shutters And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, You had such a vision of the street As the street hardly understands; Sitting along the bed’s edge, where You curled the papers from your hair, Or clasped the yellow soles of feet In the palms of both soiled hands.
In the third part, the speaker is remembering the night before, as he was turning down his bed covers. He slid into bed but had trouble getting to sleep. Then as he was slipping into sleep, his mind kept suffering a constant bombardment of many “sordid images.”
Once morning arrived, he sat at the edge of the bed, stretching and bending over to touch his feet. His hands were dirty. He seems to find a bit of a parallel between his hands being “soiled” as his soul seems to also to have been soiled by the multitude of nasty images that had kept him awake the night before.
Part IV: First Person, Third Person, Second Person
His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o’clock; And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
The speaker now performs a veritable tightrope act as the refers to himself first in the third person, next in the first person, before landing again on the second person, as he has done earlier in his narrative.
But then again he sprinkles his report with unpleasant images, such as “short square fingers” that are “stuffing pipes.” He also refers to the “conscience of the blackened street,” which belies the nature of conscience itself.
The speaker has been implying subtly that his own soul is suffering greatly from this debased environment, and now he describes the nature of that suffering soul, which is an “infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing.”
The speaker’s only option is to acknowledge the horrid nature of the images which will ultimately lead to understanding them. And he believes already that he understands them better than most of his contemporaries.
After all, the speaker has experienced a “vision of the street.” And he knows that the street itself “hardly understands” the meaning or even the nature of that vision. The ugliness, the squalor, the suffering may likely be no more than the suffering of “ancient women / gathering fuel in vacant lots.”
The images that have wrapped around his soul will not deter that soul from its ultimate realization of its worth. The ugly world will remain ugly while the soul will look to shining through to a bright world of substance where spirituality will replace crass materialism—at least, that remains the implied hope.
Vincent’s stars whirl big on the night’s blue tint. A cypress burns in tortured paint nearby. I gazed upon the young man’s t-shirt print And let my vain heart all reason deny. Would that I had not trod that cursèd sphere Nor let delusion tempt me to engage. I permitted risk, drew peril too near. I must now face the crime and pay the wage. Would that I had never engaged such wrong! I yielded where control should have triumphed— No painted stars can sing sin into song! No tortured art can render guilt exempt! Soul now teaches heart what it needs to learn, As I brook all future pain that I earn.
naked, sitting bent over so her head rests on her arms that fold over her knees, her stringy hair straggling down her back, a bulging belly, hanging breasts, weeping unlipped, useless as flab, cow-heavy with unseasoned love, joy prostituted, future raped. if we could see her face, would we see swollen red eyes? or is it too hard to move the heart again? has the soul become a jaded stranger digging through the dirt of this world for just a glimpse of itself?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson conflated Homer’s character with that of Dante’s to speak to his own difficulty of facing life after the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam.
Introduction and Text of “Ulysses”
Tennyson’s “Ulysses” features three unrimed blank verse paragraphs (versagraphs). Tennyson’s “Ulysses” dramatizes the theme of struggling to face life after living through a cataclysmic experience.
About his poem, Tennyson has explained, “Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in ‘In Memoriam’.”
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Reading
Commentary on “Ulysses”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson conflated Homer’s character with that of Dante’s to speak to his own difficulty of facing life after the death of his dear friend, Arthur Hallam.
First Versagraph: The Value of an Idle Life
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
In the first versagraph, the speaker, Ulysses, the Roman counterpart of the Greek “Odysseus,” complains that his life as “an idle king” is not worth much. The speaker’s activity consists of administering justice to the citizens who do not even understand him. All they are interested in is sleeping and eating.
Second Versagraph: The Habit of Travel
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
The habit of “travel” has become such a great part of the speaker’s life that he finds he is unable to rehabituate himself to a settled existence. The speaker then catalogues the events and feelings that have kept him occupied most of his life during his adventures.
While traveling, he became “a name” “roaming with a hungry heart.” The speaker reports, “Much have I seen and known; cities of men / And manners, climates, councils, governments, / Myself not least, but honoured of them all.”
Compared to the excitement of the traveling life, settling down with an “aged wife” and trying to govern a territory seem dull and unsatisfying. Although he has been back from his odyssey for only three years, the speaker yearns to be able to set sail again: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”
Third Versagraph: A Strong Will
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
In the third versagraph, Ulysses introduces his son, Telemachus. He describes his son as decent and capable of fulfilling the role Ulysses now fills. And the speaker makes it clear that he would prefer his son take over his governing responsibilities, so that he can continue his swashbuckling world-wide adventures: “When I am gone.
He works his work, I mine.” The speaker then claims that in the harbor his ships are ready. And although he and his sailors are old, “Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”
For the men who fought very great odds to return to their homes, the speaker avers that something useful should still be available for them accomplish. Thus, Ulysses appeals to this sailors, “Come, my friends, / ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He insists that he still has goals to achieve and miles to travel before he is ready to give up his striving.
Finally, the speaker admits that he and his sailors are not as strong as they used to be “in old days,” but although they may be weaker physically, they are nevertheless “strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” The speaker is convinced that they all have the spiritual strength to conquer foes, whether those adversaries be external or internal.
what if we decide to be public about it? nothing terribly elaborate, just a cup of tea, just a rude little cafe and we pick our table. you point to one along the wall, and say you’d like that one but it’s occupied, and so we drag another chair out to one situated on the cobblestone, not so wobbly as it looks. your face looks swollen, eyes tired, too much late night studying, so many papers to write, I guess, I hardly know what to say, but want to say you are still beautiful, and the stars remind me of that big Starry Night T-shirt you used to wear, and that you loved Vincent: Vincent, my new home, where I invite you in and we talk and touch. the people look old and foreign but they do not stare at us, they glance and return to their own mates. I wonder who lives in the apartment above the cafe. I wonder where this cobblestone street leads to. maybe we will explore this city together, maybe we will have lunch tomorrow, here at this very same roughly etched cafe, but you have not yet spoken, and maybe you won’t, maybe I should start. what should I say? maybe I should say, have you seen this painting before? was it ever silk-screened on a T-shirt like your Starry Night one? just how many prints do you have now? How long do you think it will take you to finish your masters? do you think you will come back here to teach? and don’t you think it feels almost sodden holding this print together? and don’t you think it feels safely warm being close enough to touch, even if we don’t?
